For the latter group, there’s something called the “My Automated Conversation Coach” system that can help them out a lot in this department. Called MACH for short, it’s basically a system that was created to help socially awkward people with their conversation skills. How? By providing these people with a virtual human to talk to. The system lets the user interact with the three-dimensional character in a variety of situations. MACH’s creator, M. [MIT via Dvice] Wind-Up Space Invaders Can’t Be Destroyed with Your Laser Pointer Disney Movies Get Brutally Honest Titles. Amazingly realistic digital screen characters are finally here. Virtual talking head “Zoe” uses a basic set of six simulated emotions that can then be modified and combined (credit: Toshiba Cambridge Research Lab/Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge) Meet Zoe: a digital talking head.

She can express a range of human emotions on demand with “unprecedented realism” and could herald a new era of human-computer interaction, according to researchers at Toshiba’s Cambridge Research Lab and the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who created her. Zoe, or her offspring, could be used as a visible version of Siri, as a personal assistant in smartphones, or to replace mobile phone texting with “face messaging” in which you “face-message” friends. The lifelike face can display emotions such as happiness, anger, and fear, and changes its voice to suit any feeling the user wants it to simulate. Users can type in any message, specifying the required emotion, and the face recites the text.

DIY digital assistants Face Works. How close are we to truly photorealistic, real-time games?
Every graphical and technical advance the game industry has seen from Pong to Crysis has been a small step toward the end goal of a real-time, photorealistic 3D world that is truly indistinguishable from a real-world scene. Speaking at the DICE Summit Thursday, Epic Games founder and programmer Tim Sweeney examined the speed and direction of computing improvements and determined that we "might expect, over the course of our lifetime, we'd get to amounts of computing power that come very close to simulating reality.
" The necessary bounds for true photorealism are set by the physical limits of the human eye, Sweeney explained, which can only process the equivalent of a 30 megapixel image at about 70 frames per second. Given current trends, monitor display technology should be able to handle that level of detail for a small area in just a few more generations.

A light matter But simply pushing polygons isn't enough to get true realism. Revolutionary interfaces. Star Wars 1313 dev: Graphics will be 'indistinguishable from reality' in ten years. Visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light Magic Kim Libreri has predicted that in ten years graphics will be 'indistinguishable from reality.' Zoom In a video interview, ILM's Kim Libreri discusses how video game graphics have evolved, and where they are headed in the future. ILM is working with LucasArts on the upcoming Star Wars 1313, and while photo-realism has not been reached, the aim is to create a game with a high-level cinema aesthetic, using motion capture and strong vocal work. Libreri commented on the current state of computer graphics, saying "the way its going, it's gonna be pretty hard to tell the difference between something that is interactive and rendered in real-time, and something that was done for an animated TV show, or even a live action thing.